Toolkit protocol: Defining and implementing the communication strategy
There are three main groups with which you might have to communicate, each requiring a particular focus and strategies:
- First, you need to communicate with the participants of the process to keep them informed about the process and its progress.
- In many instances, in parallel you will also communicate with the wider public that is not involved in the process directly to keep them informed and to gather wider feedback.
- Beyond these, there are more specific groups like stakeholders, public administration or experts that might require their own targeted communication actions.
As you will know from >stock-taking, in most cases there might be already some on-going communication on the issue among the diverse groups and in the public arena. Remember you will enter this space with your process and so you will likely have to enter into a dialogue with the existing exchanges. Depending on your mandate, this might be an easy or rather difficult task.
During the early stages of the process, communication will be about raising awareness about the exercise, which can support the recruitment, involving the promotion of the participatory event and its context. At this stage you will have to be very clear about the purpose and the expected results of the process as well as who is standing behind it. Make sure that you tailor the media and messages to specific groups of citizens - reaching families with kids will be very different than reaching the elderly. At this stage, you might also want to reach out to relevant stakeholders and experts as well as public institutions to get their support and potentially ensure participation.
During the core part of the process, you might want to keep the wider public informed about the progress of the process - what is happening, where, why and what are the ongoing results. Bear in mind, however, that protecting the privacy and the work of participants might be an important factor in determining how much you want to reveal about the process when it's still running. E.g., if participants are developing recommendations on a controversial issue, you might want to make sure that they are not subject to external pressures. In parallel, you might want to gather ideas and feedback from the citizens who are not directly involved in your process, but who might still have an interest in it. This can be done in many ways, whether through an online platform, open call or during an open event.
Communication is also a very important part of the >follow-up.
Read about the different communication channels you can use:
If your process will engage with some specific community or is very focused on a specific place, local reference persons that are well-known and trusted might be one of the most important communication channels for whatever you might need: raising interest in your process, recruitment, informing the wider public, disseminating results, gathering support for their implementation and even for organisational reasons.
Either in person (door to door), online or phone, direct contact can be a great way for more in-depth communication that is often necessary in interactions with potential participants, stakeholders, experts and decision makers.
A helpful but work-intensive way for communicating about your process can be to create a dedicated website. This can be a stable reference point throughout the process as you can direct there all interested.
While easy to use and accessible, the results can often be disappointing. Even if the potential reach is very broad, the speed and volume of information on social media is such that in practice it is difficult to break through with your message. The best way might be to have your messages posted or re-posted by individuals and organisations with well-established profiles and large following. Public posts can be a good way to inform people about what you are doing but will require much more effort to get any active involvement. Where social media and associated communication tools might be very helpful is in staying in touch with the participants between the events. Chats and private groups can be used to share information, receive feedback, submit 'homework' or create a hub where participants can exchange their impressions and experiences. The downside is that all participants need to be signed-up to a given platform.
These include TV, radio and print, which exist at many different geographical levels (local, regional, national, international) and target various audiences. Consider which will be appropriate for your level of process (e.g. with respect to geographic scope) and the audience you want to reach. For contacting many local outlets, you might get help from a local reference person.
While they might be difficult to get access to, institutional channels like newsletters, bulletin boards and digital post can be of great help, especially in the early stages of the process when you need to build legitimacy. For instance, a digital- or snail-mail of the municipality can be an excellent way to support your recruitment with either general information about the process or invitations. Given their official nature they make the communication more trustworthy. This might be especially important if those you want to reach have not heard of or taken part in participatory processes before.
There are also other types of activities that you can carry out together with (potential) participants. For example, if you would like to carry out a process with people from a specific neighbourhood, you can first organise an open event, to which everyone is invited, to present the idea of what you would like to do, sense the ground and event start recruitment.